About The 2nd Annual SitP

Even with a day of rain, the 2016 SitP event was a success with approximately 2,000 people braving periodically stormy weather to enjoy live theatre, vendors, music and more. For the Second Annual Event we’re trying to grow even larger in scale.

We’ll keep updating the website as more information becomes available, though right now we are in the process of finding sponsors/vendors/merchants and more to make the 2017 SitP Ocala’s premiere FREE performing arts festival. Please take a moment to view our upcoming auditions and show information!

WHERE

Tuscawilla Park
Ocala, FL

WHEN

October 15th, 2016
11 AM to 10 PM

EDUCATION GUIDE

To encompass the educational element of the event, we commissioned an education booklet to be given out to any who wished, for free!

OPEN AUDITIONS!

Audition Dates: October 1st and 2nd from 7 PM to 10 PM.Show Date: December 2ndRehearsals: TBD

Auditions to be held at The Reilly Arts Center: 500 NE 9th St. – Ocala, FL 34470

About the Play

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595/96. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set.

The Second Annual Event!

Ocala/Marion County’s Second Annual Shakespeare in the Park is a day-long event presented at Tuscawilla Park on the outdoor stage next to the Reilly Arts Center. This year’s event will include three main-stage performances of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Midwinter Night’s Dream as well as several smaller performances throughout the day.

We will also be highly promoting the educational aspects of the event by presenting an education guide to the local schools for distribution, as well as the event itself that will both enhance knowledge of Shakespeare’s works as well as promote the event.

At our first annual event we experienced some severe rainfall throughout the day and even with the weather we were able to entice an estimated 2,000 people to join us for a day of the Bard. We are estimating between 3,500 and 5,000 community members at this year’s event and are planning a massive marketing campaign to ensure those numbers.

For more information, please contact us directly. We are happy to answer any questions you may have!

Our 2017 SitP Sponsors So Far

We are currently accepting new sponsors for the Second Annual SitP Event! Get more info on the JOIN US Page.

A Subsidiary of Insomniac Theatre

Shakespeare in the Park was started as a subsidiary of Insomniac Theatre Company, Inc. and falls under Insomniac’s 501(c)(3) status. Please make all payments to Shakespeare in the Park out to Insomniac Theatre.

Facebook feed

2018/09/18 at 3:52 pm

Hello to our fellow Shakespeare lovers out there. We’ve had a lot of people asking when the next Shakespeare in the Park event will be and we wanted to get the word out that due to a lack of financial support we won’t be able to bring it around this year.

SitP is a wonderful community event that allowed Ocala to share the performing arts for free with all who wished to experience it. It’s an extremely difficult and expensive event to put together and we learned more each year on how to improve.

We’re very grateful to Marion Cultural Alliance and Duke Energy who helped support us each year and reached out to do so again this year, as well as all of our smaller sponsors who made the event possible in the past. They truly see the need of community based arts projects. We may bring back SitP in the future, but to do so we’ll have to secure more financial backing to make it feasible and to improve.

We just wanted to say thank you and if you’d like to know more about upcoming events from Insomniac Theatre Company, Inc. please visit our Facebook Page. We have a very exciting season that we’ll be announcing as soon as everything is official. Until then, we’re constantly on the lookout for new and innovative ways to bring the arts to our community and ask you to keep supporting your local arts scene both financially and as an audience member. We have many wonderful groups here in Ocala/Marion County that can use all the support they can get to keep bringing high quality cultural events to the masses. ... See more

We’ll be posting a lot of thanks to our sponsors and those who helped bring Shakes in the Park to life later this week.

As we recoup from the past few insane weeks we would like to thank everyone for their support and for making our 2017 season the most attended so far. Between Drunken Oedipus Rex, Sweeney Todd, War of the Worlds, Shakespeare in the Park’s Midwinter Night’s Dream, and our Willy Wonka Shadowcast we’ve been going non-stop since March.

We’ll be taking the next week to close out our last two shows (packing, organizing, paperwork, getting our Shakes auctions winners their prizes, the fun stuff that means Chad might get his garage back) and trying to take a breath or two before the holidays.

Chad is working on finding dates and filling out licensing paperwork for next year’s season and we’ll be announcing our 2018 season as soon as we have it written in stone. We’re looking at doing some originals, another Shadowcast that has been requested a lot, a show that Chad has been wanting to do for years, another giant musical and even a straight play or two. We’ll even be doing an original show in Gainesville!

We’re very thankful to be the resident theatre company of the Reilly Arts Center and their support and belief in what we do is what has allowed us to entertain so many of you. We’re also thankful for Jessica Watson who directed Midwinter Night’s Dream and Joan Elizabeth who took Willy Wonka by the top hat as well as all of the performers, crew and production teams who made every show amazing.

So from the “little theatre company that could”, thank you all and we hope you’ll enjoy what we have in mind next. We shall continue to work hard bringing you creative and entertaining programming as long as we can. ... See more

From the team who brought you the World Premiere JAWS and Jurassic Park Shadowcasts comes a brand new entry in this extremely fun and popular series; the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder will be shown with an all original shadowcast performance directed by Joan Elizabeth live on stage while the movie plays. Experience the movie like never before!

What's a shadowcast? Made famous by the midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a shadowcast performance is a live performance of the movie that's screening at the same time; as though the live actors are shadowing the screen! How are we going to do it with Willy Wonka? You'll have to come and find out!

The world is astounded when Willy Wonka, for years a recluse in his factory, announces that five lucky people will be given a tour of the factory, shown all the secrets of his amazing candy, and one will win a lifetime supply of Wonka chocolate. Nobody wants the prize more than young Charlie, but as his family is so poor that buying even one bar of chocolate is a treat, buying enough bars to find one of the five golden tickets is unlikely in the extreme. But in movieland, magic can happen. Charlie, along with four somewhat odious other children, get the chance of a lifetime and a tour of the factory. Along the way, mild disasters befall each of the odious children, but can Charlie beat the odds and grab the brass ring? ... See more